I like the movie No Country for Old Men directed by the Coen brothers. That's the reason why I recently read the novel of the same name. As I'm not a native speaker, I chose the book translated in my mother tongue. And one paragraph in this book bothers me.
Some of the old time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A lotta folks find that hard to believe. Jim Scarborough'd never carried one; that's the younger Jim. Gaston Boykins wouldn't wear one up in Comanche County.
The same sentences appear in the movie intro. I watched this move when I was in the US. When I first heard these English sentences in a theater, I understand it as follows:
- There were more than one sheriff with the name Jim Scarborough. (Maybe a son is named after his father so that they have the same first name.)
- And the one who had never carried a gun was the younger one.
But the translated version explain this sentence as "Jim Scarborough had never carried a gun when he was young."
I know that this question may not have a definite answer because these sentences do not contain enough information on Jim Scarborough. But which explanation is more plausible?
Best Answer
It's rare that we get a chance to provide such a definitive answer here at EL&U... but the translation is WRONG! and your first impression was right
But it's understandable why they made that mistake. The casual, wandering, way of adding to what was just said reflects a way of talking that is very realistic for that character. But it's "colloquial" in form and relies entirely on context, so it's not usage that would appear in an English textbook.
p.s. The way that the character might have expressed the second meaning {"when he was young."} would be more like this: "Jim Scarborough'd never carried one; until he got old." or "Jim Scarborough'd never carried one; at least while he was young."